define(_title,HTML Authoring with m4)
define(_keywords,[[procod,mihai preda,picostorage,pico storage,structured storage,mihai,preda]])
define(_description,[[Procod is a micro ISV founded by Mihai Preda]])
define(_content,[[
<h2>_title</h2>
<p>The webpages for _link(Procod,http://procod.com/) and
_link(PicoStorage,http://procod.com/picostorage/) have been
written on Windows.</p>
<p>
I wanted:
<ul>
<li>some common elements (e.g. logo, sidebar) to
appear on all pages</li>
<li>avoid using frames</li>
<li>be able to easily modify elements sidewide</li>
<li>a solution which works on Windows too</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>I used to use Macromedia Dreamweaver for HTML authoring.
Dreamweaver has these two features, <em>templates</em> and
<em>library items</em>, which are sopposed to solve the problems
presented above. But I think these features in Dreamweaver are
hard to use, fragile and inflexible. I wanted a better solution,
and I realized: I just need a macro processor.</p>

<p>
I decided to use m4, a macro processor coming from the Unix world,
which is also available on Windows. This was my first contact with
m4, and I'm very happy I found and used it. M4 made authoring
my site significantly simpler.</p>

<p>You can find here the m4 files I used for generating the Procod and
PicoStorage sites:
<ul>
<li>_link(header.hi,generator/header.hi)</li>
<li>_link(main.hi,generator/main.hi)</li>
<li>_link(sidebar.hi,generator/sidebar.hi)</li>
<li>_link(footer.hi,generator/footer.hi)</li>
<li>_link(page.hi,generator/page.hi)</li>
<li>_link(index.ht,generator/index.ht)</li>
<li>_link(m4html.ht,generator/m4html.ht)</li>
<li>_link(iniState.txt,generator/iniState.txt)</li>
<li>_link(generate.sh,generator/generate.sh)</li>
</ul>

<p>I also used CSS to somehow separate the content from the presentation:
_link(pico_yellow.css,pico_yellow.css)</p>

<p>More, I wanted to give the user feedback on the sidebar about
which page he is viewing: the link on the sidebar pointing to the current
page should be disabled, and showed differently. A neat solution
was to do this client-side by using a small javascript:
_link(pico.js,pico.js)</p>
]])

include(page.hi)